Hosts, ghosts, visitors For some years I have been making archaeological visits to Bornholm, the Danish island south of Sweden. Rock art, unique prehistoric sites and monuments, medieval settlement, churches and castles, rune stones, fishing industry, cold war relics, an arts community since the nineteenth century, contemporary heritage and tourism. The mingling remains of many…
figure and ground
Cloud study
Nyborg fjord, Denmark. With monument, ship, vapor trail. In the wake, John Constable 1821. [Link] [Link]
Cloud study with monument
North Sea – Storebaelt Bridge. After John Constable’s cloud studies 1821. Series. Archaeographic notes An archaeologist might come upon an unexpected discovery. A photographer judges when to release a shutter on a moment before the camera. Kairos is a key in archaeological and photographic engagement and mediation — kairos is actuality, the moment when things…
Robert Longo’s archaeological sensibility
An exhibition of works by Robert Longo at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art [Link]. Raft at Sea 2016-17 Longo traces photographs in charcoal. Large scale charcoal drawings. Of photographs. Blow-ups — upscaled photographs — traced projections. Iceberg for C.D.F (Caspar David Friedrich), 2015-16; The Western Wall, 2011 (Jerusalem) Stand back and you see the BIG…
ghost in the mirror
media archaeology More than twenty years ago I discovered the daguerreotype — one of the earliest of photographic media. Images are formed in a camera on polished light sensitive silver-plated copper—on mirrors. These are not just simply early photographs. They are unique one-off images, and positive-negative—you have to catch the mirrored surface at the right…
Archaeological shores: reflections on a metaphysics of cartography
Field notes. The pragmatics of an archaeological sensibility — what might one do in an archaeological visit to the beach? For as long as I can remember maps have made me anxious. Where does one draw the line of a coast, a road, a river? In archaeological excavation one is regularly required to document, record,…